Quiz: Nigerian Spam or Goldman Sachs’s Facebook Offer?

Everyone wants a piece of Facebook: millionaires, multi-millionaires, Goldman Sachs partners, hedge-fund managers, private-equity firms, and, as always, the Winklevie. Everyone! Earlier this week, The New York Times revealed that Goldman Sachs will invest $450 million in the social-networking site, and would be allowing certain clients and friends of the firm to purchase shares, too. However, as today’s Wall Street Journal reports, “Goldman has provided some potential investors with little more than a snapshot of Facebook's online traffic, advertisements and other basic measurements, with no disclosure of the Palo Alto, Calif., company's bottom line.” In fact, Goldman managed to cultivate billions of dollars of interest in Facebook using not much more than the most disreputable-seeming invitation we’ve ever read. Can you differentiate between Goldman’s letter to investors and Nigerian e-mail scams? A. “When you have a chance I wanted to find a time to discuss a highly confidential and time sensitive investment opportunity in a private company that is considering a transaction to raise additional capital.”

B. “I must confess my agitation is real, and my words are my bond in this proposal.”

C. “Try and negotiate for me some profitable blue chip investment opportunities which is risk free that I can invest with this money when it is transferred to your account.”

D. “For confidentiality reasons, I am unable to tell you the name of the company unless you agree not to use such information other than in connection with your evaluation of the investment opportunity and to keep all information that we reveal to you strictly confidential.”

E. “Contact me immediately you receive this message for more explanation.”

F. “[D]ue to our position as civil servants and members of this panel, we cannot acquire this money in our names.”

G. “Certain information we will reveal to you about the investment opportunity and the related transaction will constitute material nonpublic information about this private company.”

H. “First I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret. We shall be counting on your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of great magnitude involving a pending business transaction requiring maximum confidence.”

I. “All I can tell you is that it is a private company, but that its stock trades in a limited manner on certain private markets.”

J. “Please, for you to be clarified because, I do not expose myself to anybody I see, I believe that you are able to keep this transaction secret for me.”

L. “I will bring you into the complete picture of this pending project when I have heard from you.”

M. “If you agree to these restrictions either by responding to this email or verbally on any subsequent telephone conversation that we have, I will send you an email confirming your agreement to be subject to these restrictions and, on that basis, will provide you with a summary of the investment opportunity.”